Comments for page "the water will reclaim you"

(no title)

Mon, 21 Aug 2023 14:22:33 +0000

this is excellent. the language used does incredible work to animate the setting and its terrors; those Menacing Couplets do really well to unsettle this image and suggest coming doom or perhaps even judgement. the last couplet especially is incredible—the phrase "kingdom come" is of course so common but i love how you disturb it and activate that word "come" in the context of the ghostly interjection; it seems less a gestural and inert promise and moreso a murderous demand. i'd love to read more of your work!

(no title)

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 23:48:23 +0000

Thank you so much!

If I remember right, I think "made our mouths rich with silt" was the line I built the poem around— I was looking for a way to describe death-decay-new life (and, bluntly, a drowned body) with positive framing. The miracle of "silt" (left behind by the flooded Nile) from my grade school lessons in Egyptian history came to mind!

The third stanza really just reiterates the first two (something I love about the Psalms). The "coiled snakes" imagery should evoke the actual snakes in a setting with dotterels and sawgrass, but also, literally, mud and water and flesh.

(no title)

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 23:03:03 +0000

There’s a really cool rhythm to this poem, the note about climate anxiety here really helped me put most of the pieces together too! Curious what the first two stanzas mean, but +1 for a good time

Author Post

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 16:23:33 +0000

Something sirens sing in the Everglades.

Or maybe it's just climate anxiety.

A reworking of something I wrote for this site many, many years ago.